Journey HomeWill to Power is the duo — producer-Svengali Bob Rosenberg and singer Elin Michaels — that had a fluke 1988 hit with an improbable medley of...Journey HomePopWill to Power is the duo — producer-Svengali Bob Rosenberg and singer Elin Michaels — that had a fluke 1988 hit with an improbable medley of...1991-02-01

Will to Power is the duo — producer-Svengali Bob Rosenberg and singer Elin Michaels — that had a fluke 1988 hit with an improbable medley of Peter Frampton’s chirpy AM hit ”Baby, I Love Your Way” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s schlock FM elegy ”Free Bird.” Funny, sure — but the thing went to No. 1! Now the band — proudly named for noted problem child Friedrich Nietszche’s dictum ”the first result of happiness is a sense of power” — is back with record number two. Again the material is predominantly colorless, pop songs (by Rosenberg) with unimaginably banal lyrics: ”Fly away bird/I know you can fly so high/Got to get away/And to know the reason why.” Besides a cover of 10cc’s ”I’m Not in Love” (now headed toward the Top 10), the only track on Journey Home that stands out is the monstrous ”Koyaanisquatsi,” a treatise set to a dance beat. The song’s title (Hopi for ”life out of balance”) comes from a well-known art film; the lyrics — portentous quotations about power and freedom and such — are intoned by Rosenberg, who adds some of his own great thoughts: ”Down with the new age/Up with reality.” The song is uniquely, sweepingly misconceived, a definite low point on what is otherwise an utterly undistinguished record. D+